vernacular, abundant.

a proof that it is neither deadly nor

Cobra de Capello.-The cobra de capello is the only one exhibited by the itinerant snake charmers; and the accuracy of Davy's conjecture, that they control it, not by extracting its fangs, but by courageously availing themselves of its accustomed timidity and extreme reluctance to use its fatal weapons, received a painful confirmation during my residence in Ceylon, by the death of one of these performers, whom his audience had provoked to attempt some unaccustomed familiarity with the cobra; it bit him on the wrist, and he expired the same evening. The hill near Kandy, on which the official residences of the Governor and Colonial Secretary have been built, is covered in many places with the deserted nests of the white ants (termites), and these are the favourite retreats of the sluggish and spiritless cobra, which watches from their apertures the toads and lizards, on which it preys. Here, when I have repeatedly come upon them, their only impulse was concealment; and on one occasion, when a cobra of considerable length could not escape sufficiently quickly, owing to the bank being nearly precipitous on both sides of the road, a few blows from my whip were sufficient to deprive it of life. There is a rare variety which the natives fancifully designate the "king of the cobras;" it has the head and the anterior half of the body of so light a colour that at a distance it seems like a silvery white. A gentleman who held a civil appointment at Kornegalle, had a servant who was bitten by a snake, and he informed me that on enlarging a hole near the foot of the tree under which the accident occurred, he unearthed a cobra of upwards of

1 A Singhalese work, the Sarpa | baboona, or hermit; and the goore, Doata, quoted in the Ceylon Times, January, 1857, enumerates four species of the cobra ; the raja, or king; the velyander, or trader; the

or agriculturist. The young cobras, it says, are not venomous till after the thirteenth day, when they shed their coat for the first time.

as to induce With the ex

three feet long, and so purely white him to believe that it was an albino. ception of the rat snake1, the cobra de capello is the only serpent which seems from choice to frequent the vicinity of human dwellings, but it is doubtless attracted by the young of the domestic fowl and by the moisture of the wells and drainage. The Singhalese remark that if one cobra be destroyed near a house, its companion is almost certain to be discovered immediately after, a popular belief which I had an opportunity of verifying on more than one occasion. Once, when a snake of this description was killed in a bath of Government House at Colombo, its mate was found in the same spot the day after; and again, at my own stables, a cobra of five feet long, having fallen into the well, which was too deep to permit its escape, its companion of the same size was found the same morning in an adjoining drain. On this occasion the snake, which had been several hours in the well, swam with ease, raising its head and hood above water; and instances have repeatedly occurred of the cobra de capello voluntarily taking considerable excursions by sea. When the "Wellington," a govern

1

"Did

Coryphodon Blumenbachii. cobra de capello in Ceylon. WOLF, in his interesting story of his you ever hear," he says, "of tame Life and Adventures in Ceylon, men- cobras being kept and domesticated tions that rat-snakes were often so about a house, going in and out at domesticated by the natives as to feed pleasure, and in common with the at their table. He says: "I once rest of the inmates? In one family, saw an example of this in the house near Negombo, cobras are kept as of a native. It being meal time, he protectors, in the place of dogs, by called his snake, which immediately a wealthy man who has always large came forth from the roof under sums of money in his house. But which he and I were sitting. He this is not a solitary case of the kind. gave it victuals from his own dish, I heard. of it only the other day, but which the snake took of itself from from undoubtedly good authority. off a fig leaf that was laid for it, and The snakes glide about the house, a ate along with its host. When it terror to thieves, but never attempthad eaten its fill, he gave it a kissing to harm the inmates." and bade it go to its hole."

PLINY notices the affection that subsists between the male and female asp; and that if one of them happens to be killed, the other seeks to avenge its death.-Lib. viii. c. 37.

ment vessel employed in the conservancy of the pearl banks, was anchored about a quarter of a mile from land, in the bay of Koodremalé, a cobra was seen, about an hour before sunset, swimming vigorously towards the ship. It came within twelve yards, when the sailors assailed it with billets of wood and other missiles, and forced it to return to land. The following morning they discovered the track which it had left on the shore, and traced it along the sand till it disappeared in the jungle.1 On a later occasion, in the vicinity of the same spot, when the "Wellington" was lying at some distance from the shore, a cobra was found and killed on board, where it could only have gained access by climbing up the cable. It was first discovered by a sailor, who felt the cold chill as it glided over his foot. 2

In BENNETT'S account of "Ceylon and its Capabilities," there is a curious piece of Singhalese folk-lore, to the effect, that the cobra de capello every time it expends its poison loses a joint of its tail, and eventually acquires a head which resembles that of a toad. A recent discovery of Dr. Kelaart has thrown light on the origin of this popular fallacy. The family of "false snakes," (pseudo-typhlops) as Schlegel names the group, have till lately consisted of but three species, one only of which was known to inhabit Ceylon. They belong to a family intermediate between the lizards and serpents, with the body of the latter, and the head of the former, with which they are moreover identified by having the upper jaw fixed to the skull as in mammals and birds,

1 STEWART'S Account of the Pearl Fisheries of Ceylon, p. 9: Colombo,

1843.

The Python reticulatus (the "rock-snake") has been known, like the cobra de capello, to make short voyages at sea. One was taken on board H.M.S. "Hastings," when off the coast of Burmah, in 1853; it is now in the possession of the surgeon, Dr. Scott.

2 SWAINSON, in his Habits and Instincts of Animals, c. iv. p. 187, says that instances are well attested of the common English snake having been met with in the open channel, between the coast of Wales and the island of Anglesea, as if they had taken their departure from the one and were bound for the other.

instead of movable as amongst the true ophidians. In this they resemble the amphisbænida; but the tribe of Uropeltida or "rough tails," has the further peculiarity, that the tail is truncated, instead of ending, like that of the typhlops, in a point more or less acute; and the reptile assists its own movements by pressing the flat end to the ground. Within a very recent period an important addition has been made to this genus, by the discovery of five new species in Ceylon; in some of which the singular construction of the tail is developed to an extent infinitely more marked than in any previously existing specimen. One of these, the Uropeltis grandis of Kelaart, is distinguished by its dark brown colour shot with a bluish metallic lustre, closely approaching the ordinary shade of the cobra; and the tail is abruptly and flatly compressed as though it had been severed by a knife. The form of this singular reptile will be best understood by a reference to the accompanying figure; and there can be, I think, little doubt that to its strange and anomalous structure is to be traced the fable of the transformation of the cobra de capello. The colour alone would seem to identify

UROPELTIS GRANDIS.

the two reptiles, but the head and mouth are no longer those of a serpent, and the disappearance of the tail might readily suggest the mutilation which the tradition asserts.

The Singhalese Buddhists, in their religious abstinence from inflicting death on any creature, are accustomed, after securing a venomous snake, to enclose it in a basket of woven palm leaves, and to set it afloat on a river. During, my residence in Ceylon, I never heard

of the death of a European which was caused by the bite of a snake; and in the returns of coroners' inquests which were made officially to my department, such accidents to the natives appear chiefly to have happened at night, when the animal having been surprised or trodden on, had inflicted the wound in selfdefence.1 For these reasons the Singhalese, when obliged to leave their houses in the dark, carry a stick with a loose ring, the noise 2 of which as they strike it on the ground is sufficient to warn the snakes to leave their path.

The Python. The great python 3 (the "boa," as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the "anaconda" of Eastern story) which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens within a mile of the fort of Colombo, where it feeds on hog-deer and other smaller animals which frequent them.

The natives occasionally take it alive, and securing it to a pole expose it for sale as a curiosity. One which was brought to me in this way measured seventeen feet with a proportionate thickness: but another which crossed my path on a coffee estate on the Peacock Mountain at Pusilawa, considerably exceeded these dimensions. Another which I watched in the garden at Elie House, near Colombo, surprised me by the ease with which it erected itself almost perpendicularly in order to scale a wall upwards of ten feet high.

Of ten species which ascend the trees to search for squirrels and lizards, and to rifle the nests of birds,

1 In a return of 112 coroners' inquests, in cases of death from wild animals, held in Ceylon in five years, from 1851 to 1855 inclusive, 68 are ascribed to the bites of serpents; and in almost every instance the assault is set down as having taken place at night. The majority of the sufferers were children and women.

2 PLINY notices that the serpent has the sense of hearing more acute than that of sight; and that it is more frequently put in motion by the sound of footsteps than by the appearance of the intruder, "excitatur pede sæpius."-Lib. viii. c. 36.

Python reticulatus, Gray.